Best Tim Hryciw and Amy Slaughter can tell, their freshmen geometry
class may be the first group of students to design and build a living
shelter for the homeless.

Not bad for a Benson Tech program, they've been told, that might be homeless itself at year's end.

Tech Geometry
is the ground-breaking, mood-altering, contextualized-math class at
Benson that illustrates what's possible when two inspired teachers cut
loose from the conventional.

Hryciw is the gung-ho electronics
guy, Slaughter the delightfully caustic math whiz. On alternate days,
their 33 freshmen wrestle with congruent triangles and pythagorean
theorems in Room 228, then march down to the old auto shop and put those skills to good and lasting use:

Building a 120-square-foot structure for Dignity Village and a playhouse for Escuela-Viva, a bilingual preschool in the neighborhood.

The experience re-frames the students' understanding of the smartest kid in the room.

"The
kids who haven't done well in math since the third or fourth grade
suddenly feel they can do things," Slaughter says. "Some are able to
use the voice they've found in the math classroom."

The construction site provides hands-on experience with shop tools that can take your hands off.

"If
you don't pay attention in geometry, you can't do anything in here with
the trusses," freshman Venus Sudarak reminds me from her perch atop a
saw horse. "You need tangents, sines and cosines to figure out the
angles."

Students learn to drive home a nail, even as they warm to the necessity of supporting one another.

"We
break them up into groups where we know they'll be uncomfortable,"
Slaughter says. "It's a good learning skill. That's what happens on a
job site. You don't get to choose your best friend every day."

But at the end of each day, the students are ever closer to giving something unique to those who have less than they do.

"We
really like the social justice piece of this," Slaughter said.
"Especially since Benson is 70 percent free-and-reduced lunch."

"And 75 percent minority students," Hryciw adds.

Hryciw
said he and Slaughter needed five years to get the program up and
running: "Budget cutbacks. Two teachers in one class. A lot of people
thought we were dumbing down math. Amy tells me it's the hardest
geometry class she's ever taught."

Space is an issue. "We pushed
our way into the auto shop," Hryciw admits. "Not one of my smoother
moves." But the spacious digs became necessary when the teachers toured
Dignity Village and realized their freshmen should build something
bigger than a chicken coop.

The buzz about Tech Geometry has been as intense as the local business support. A $7,000 grant from Daimler Trucks helped purchase building materials. STEM grants from Intel and PGE provided the solar panels and low-voltage lighting. Heck, Speed's Towing even signed on to transport the finished structures from Benson's back alley to where they'll do the most good.

What, then, are Slaughter and Hryciw worried about?

The
lack of a guarantee from Portland Public Schools and Benson's new principal, Curtis Wilson Jr., that Tech Geometry has a permanent home.

Slaughter
and Hryciw are not shy about their commitment to Benson -- "The school
gave me a purpose and a direction in life," Hryciw says -- or speaking
their minds. And both teachers are frustrated by Wilson's reluctance to
provide a permanent lease for their unique work product.

"They
keep saying, 'Great class, great class ... but you only have that spot
until the end of the year,'" Hryciw said. "And I've been asked at least
four times by Wilson, 'Well, if we can't find the room, will you just
quit the program?'

"No. We will leave. And we'll take the program with us."

On Tuesday morning, Trip Goodall, the district's high-school director, did his best to calm the waters.

"There's
a firm commitment to keeping the program," Goodall said. "The energy
Tim and Amy bring to the program is the kind of enthusiasm we want to
see in all of our classrooms."

Goodall acknowledged, "We're
continuing to look at how we resolve the space issue," but noted that an
expansion of the program -- to include a parallel Algebra class taught in combination with a student-run printing company -- is a "key
objective" in the district's CTE Revival grant.

"It's going to continue. I don't think anyone wants to see the program leave Benson."

Daimler
certainly doesn't. Waleed Sadruddin, Daimler's diversity and
inclusion manager, called Tech Geometry "a benchmark for how (STEM)
funds are used. We saw a room full of engaged students, who are ...
building something with a social conscience."